The "laboratory" effect: comparing radiologists' performance and variability during prospective clinical and laboratory mammography interpretations.
Publication/Presentation Date
10-1-2008
Abstract
PURPOSE: To compare radiologists' performance during interpretation of screening mammograms in the clinic with their performance when reading the same mammograms in a retrospective laboratory study.
MATERIALS AND METHODS: This study was conducted under an institutional review board-approved, HIPAA-compliant protocol; the need for informed consent was waived. Nine experienced radiologists rated an enriched set of mammograms that they had personally read in the clinic (the "reader-specific" set) mixed with an enriched "common" set of mammograms that none of the participants had previously read in the clinic by using a screening Breast Imaging Reporting and Data System (BI-RADS) rating scale. The original clinical recommendations to recall the women for a diagnostic work-up, for both reader-specific and common sets, were compared with their recommendations during the retrospective experiment. The results are presented in terms of reader-specific and group-averaged sensitivity and specificity levels and the dispersion (spread) of reader-specific performance estimates.
RESULTS: On average, the radiologists' performance was significantly better in the clinic than in the laboratory (P = .035). Interreader dispersion of the computed performance levels was significantly lower during the clinical interpretations (P < .01).
CONCLUSION: Retrospective laboratory experiments may not represent either expected performance levels or interreader variability during clinical interpretations of the same set of mammograms in the clinical environment well.
Volume
249
Issue
1
First Page
47
Last Page
53
ISSN
1527-1315
Published In/Presented At
Gur, D., Bandos, A. I., Cohen, C. S., Hakim, C. M., Hardesty, L. A., Ganott, M. A., Perrin, R. L., Poller, W. R., Shah, R., Sumkin, J. H., Wallace, L. P., & Rockette, H. E. (2008). The "laboratory" effect: comparing radiologists' performance and variability during prospective clinical and laboratory mammography interpretations. Radiology, 249(1), 47–53. https://doi.org/10.1148/radiol.2491072025
Disciplines
Diagnosis | Medicine and Health Sciences | Other Analytical, Diagnostic and Therapeutic Techniques and Equipment | Radiology
PubMedID
18682584
Department(s)
Department of Radiology and Diagnostic Medical Imaging
Document Type
Article